A Map for Every Occasion
by monkaholic
Summary: Annie learns a lot of things, one of which being: maps suck.


Annie liked maps. They gave her direction, a flawless path to follow for any occasion. Need to get to the supermarket? Don't worry, Annie will pull out her trusty pocket map and determine the most convenient distance from point A to point B. She'll even trace the route in a pink highlighter to make absolutely certain that a wrong turn is never made. Even as a child at the amusement park she would pick up one of those little brochures and spend 20 minutes studying the map in order to determine the route that would be the most effective in ascertaining the greatest amount of entertainment before her mother would inevitably start complaining about her bunion and shuffle Annie back to the car. Maps were great. Maps never failed Annie, and so it was only natural that she had her entire life mapped out by the age of ten. First and foremost, she would grow breasts. That was an important one. She would achieve and maintain a 4.0 grade point average for the rest of her school career. She would have her first kiss by the time she was 15, preferably from that Troy Bolton boy who helped her up on the playground after she had gotten hit in the head by a rogue football. In high school she would be a cheerleader and class president. She would graduate as the valedictorian and go on to an Ivy League college where she would study pre-med. By 25 she would be in grad school and married to Troy, they would have their first baby two years later, then another one exactly two years after that. They would own a cocker spaniel and walk it every evening together with the kids. She'd become a top heart surgeon at John Hopkins. She'd grow old with Troy and treasure her grandchildren. And then she'd die. It had all been so clear to Annie, so simple. What she hadn't accounted for was that life throws you detours that send you down muddy dirt roads that aren't even listed on the darn map because they're _dirt roads_ and no one in their right mind would choose to traverse such a thing even when the detour tells them that they have no other choice.

Her boobs didn't grow to their full potential until she was 16; her cumulative grade point average by the end of senior year was a 3.8 because she had gotten a B in gym class; her first kiss was with Troy _Parsons_, the Chess team captain, and she cut her lip on his braces; cheerleading was a bust and she was only elected the class president because no one else had bothered to run for the position; she never graduated as valedictorian, and in fact graduated late because her mom had sent her to rehab after she had found Annie passed out next to a bottle of caffeine pills after an all-night study session. And to top it all off, Troy (Bolton) had never noticed her. Ever. Didn't even know her name until the other kids started calling her Little Annie Adderall. It was then that Annie came to the realization that maps sucked. Unfortunately, without a map, Annie had no purpose.

When she found out that Troy would be attending Greendale too, she thought that maybe her ex-beloved map system hadn't failed her after all.

* * *

She didn't really need to be in a study group. She had only invited herself after she had overheard Troy and Abed talking about it (and why hadn't anyone invited her? She had every right to a study group as the rest of them. It wasn't like Senor Chang was the easiest man to decipher between all of his rants about being mistaken for the driver's ed teacher and twisting people's words into Vietnam war references just so he could point out that he's actually Korean). To anyone else, signing up for three out of five of Troy's classes along with joining his study group might reek of desperation, but as far as Annie was concerned, she was just unfalteringly determined. An admirable quality if she did say so herself.

When Jeff walked through the door, she may have held her breath for an instant before sizing him up and concluding that there was absolutely no way he was actually a tutor. Still though, she tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, and that totally wasn't just because his hair was kind of perfect. And when he called her awesome (and actually made her _feel_ awesome), she did _not_ have the sudden urge to throw him down on the table and kiss him senseless, because she was in love with Troy, and she should only be having those thoughts about Troy, but Troy had just been making her feel anything but awesome, so if she _had_ had those thoughts about Jeff, then surely it was understandable.

* * *

As the semester went by, Annie learned a few things. One of which was that no matter how hard Annie tried, Troy would never see her. He saw her, but he didn't really _see_ her, and as much as she wanted to just blurt out her feelings to him, a part of her would always want him to notice her without having to _ask_ him to notice her. Because she deserved that much, didn't she? And besides, if she actually ever did tell him, she was pretty sure that he would misconstrue it as a sign of friendship and go on blissfully unaware that she was madly in love with him. His obliviousness somehow made him even more lovable to Annie.

She also learned that Pierce used to be a champion water polo player (but she doubted the validity of that statement after having watched him from the stands at a Greendale game where he spent the entire time being preoccupied with his chafing speedo before getting hit in the head with the ball and passing out). More importantly though, she learned that Jeff had the power to make her feel special. And she wasn't talking about the harmless flirting that resulted in her typing up her notes for him after every Spanish class. Well, that was part of it, but it was mostly in those rare moments where he let her see the real him. The him that was surprisingly gallant in his own way. Like when he diverted Senor Chang's taunts away from her by asking him how he became such a flaming douche in perfect Spanish (she only knew the Spanish form of "douche" because she caught Jeff and Troy looking up dirty words on the internet one day while Britta was on one of her tirades about men being too immature to walk the same earth as women and that Darwin was obviously mistaken about the male species in the evolution department). Or that time when Annie accidentally came upon Troy and Randi kissing in the courtyard and Jeff came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder to give her a comforting squeeze. He didn't say anything, he just gave her a sympathetic smile when she looked up at him, and then he held out his arm to lead her away from the atrocity. And then there was the fact that he showed up to her bowling tournament (which was for her gym credit) to cheer her on even though he had stubbornly refused her invitation repeatedly (she suspected that finally looking him straight in the eye and saying "It's important to me, Jeff" with as much vulnerability as she could muster was the deciding factor for him).

The thing about Jeff was that he _always_ saw her without her having to ask him to see her. In fact, sometimes he saw her too well, made her realize things about herself that she really hadn't wanted to acknowledge, and that was unnerving. But she supposed that she did the same thing to him.

* * *

Kissing Jeff had been the most impulsive thing she had ever done. Well, aside from sleeping with her high school physics teacher, but she hadn't been completely sober when she did that. With Jeff, she was high on adrenaline. Totally natural adrenaline, not the manufactured kind that had perpetuated her amorous happenings with Mr. Sanders. No, with Jeff, she hadn't even really thought about it. She got an impulse, and she followed it, and it won them the debate. The fact that he found her attractive enough to drop a paraplegic on the floor certainly gave her a thrill that had nothing to do with actually winning the debate, and, if she was honest, that kind of scared her. Jeff wasn't Troy. She wasn't Britta. They weren't supposed to want each other. They _couldn't_ want each other. It wasn't on her map.

* * *

Things were a little weird between them after the debate, especially since Pierce and Troy kept making catcalls at them for two weeks and Shirley kept asking them when they were going to set a date for the wedding. At first she didn't know whether to run away or simply hide her face, but when she looked over to Jeff and saw the terrified look in his eyes, she just gave him a reassuring smile and looked back to the group as she said, "We're planning to have a double wedding with Abed and Troy this spring." That managed to send Shirley into an all-out guffaw as Troy sputtered and Pierce genuinely congratulated them all.

Later, in the hall, Jeff stopped her and pulled her aside. She tried to ignore how acutely she felt his hand on her arm.

"That was… great work in there, Annie," he said. "I always knew there was an Ellen DeGeneres hiding inside of you somewhere."

"Thanks!" she said, bouncing on her heels and probably smiling way too hard.

He gave her a breathy laugh, and they just stood there without saying anything. And she really didn't feel like she needed to say anything, or that he did either. Until she caught his eyes straying to her lips, and she knew that he was probably trying not to do that, because she was trying not to look at his lips, but when he looked at hers, it was like permission to look at his, too. And some strange voice inside of her was telling her to lean in, but she couldn't, because this was _Jeff_. And so when he started to lean towards her, she pulled back and said that she had to go… somewhere… that isn't here, and she high-tailed it out of there. She couldn't resist looking back at him once, and she saw him with his forehead against the wall, and she really wanted to go back to him and make him not look so dejected, but she couldn't, because things had changed between them and she didn't trust herself to not makeout with him right then and there. So she left.

* * *

They avoided each other as much as possible after that until they were assigned as partners for a Spanish project. There was no getting out of it, especially since Senor Chang had it in for her (she really had no idea what she ever did to deserve his wrath, but at least it was mostly harmless wrath, except for this stupid project). So, they ended up in a room together. Alone. For the first time since the almost-kiss. She couldn't even really look at him, and she knew he wasn't looking at her either. The silence was almost too much, and she kept _waiting_ for him to speak because he was the one that was supposed to be so brilliant with words, but apparently when it comes to inappropriate almost-kisses in the hallway of a community college, he is speechless. So she finally speaks… at the same time he does.

"This is stupid—"  
"I'm dating someone!"

Wait, what? "Wait, what?" Annie asked.

He finally looked at her, a cautious smile as he says again, "I'm… dating someone."

"Oh…" Oh? Really? She didn't know what she was feeling, or how to express it, but "Oh" just did not cover it. She was relieved maybe, disappointed probably, confused most definitely. "When… when did this happen?"

"Last week," he said, looking down. And somehow she knew that meant right after their almost-kiss. And for some reason that really hurt, that he could just substitute someone else in her place, that it had just been hormones and nothing deeper after all.

"Right," she finally said. "That's great! I'm happy for you, Jeff." She laid a hand on his forearm and gave it a squeeze, forcing a smile as he searched her face. "Now, for the project I was thinking…"

* * *

They were all taking Spanish II for the spring semester, so they agreed to keep the study group going. Something was missing for her though. She was missing Jeff. He was still there, but he just wasn't… Jeff. Not with her. He no longer pulled her chair out for her in the cafeteria, he didn't flirt her Spanish notes out of her anymore (or even ask for them, for that matter, even though she was sure to have a set typed up just for him), he no longer shared a secret smile with her when Troy was being extra dimwitted, he no longer held his arm out for her to walk her to her next class. Now they just said the cursory hi and bye to each other and that was that. She wasn't quite sure why Jeff refused to go back to the way things were, especially since Annie was trying so hard to get that back. She finally resolved to follow him out of the study group and simply ask him about it, because for some reason it felt easier confronting Jeff with her feelings than it was Troy.

"Annie," he said, "Just… leave it alone."

"But why? We were friends. _Good_ friends."

"Yeah, a little too good," is all he said before he left Annie standing in the hall alone.

* * *

When she heard Britta and Shirley talking about Jeff and that teacher from the Halloween party being serious, Annie suddenly got the urge to kiss Troy. And it wasn't because of Jeff, it was because she had wanted to kiss Troy since she was ten years old. So she did it. She got up from her seat and walked over to Troy, grabbed his face and slammed her lips against his, and she waited for the sparks. For those fireworks that she always knew would be there, but… they never came. Not even when he realized what she was doing and pulled her body to his as he responded to the kiss. It was everything she hadn't imagined, and a part of her died a little inside. When she pulled away from him, she caught sight of Jeff in the doorway, his face a careful mask of nothingness at the scene that he had walked in on.

* * *

"So… you and Troy, huh?"

Annie nodded, a sad smile on her face. It was just them in the study room. Jeff had shown up early, something that rarely if ever happened.

"How long has it been now?"

"Five weeks," she said.

"Great."

"Great." Annie looked back down at her books.

"Are you… You don't seem happy."

"I'm happy," she said, a little less enthusiastically than she meant to say it.

He just squinted his eyes a little and gave her one of those all-knowing nods of his that used to make her feel special but now just made her feel naked. It sucked that he could read her so easily at a time like this. Didn't he know that he lost that right when he refused to go back to the way things used to be?

"Annie, I…"

The ticking of the clock behind her was suddenly several decibels louder than usual as she waited for him to continue. "Yes?" she prompted him, a little breathless as her eyes met his, sure that he was about to say something important. Something life-changing, even.

But then Troy walked in with a "Heeeeeey, there's my girl!"and he engulfed her in a hug, and as she looked at Jeff over Troy's shoulder, his mask of nothingness was firmly back in place.

* * *

During the last week of spring semester, Annie finally called it quits with Troy.

* * *

Her Spanish II final exam was the last one for the year. It felt good to finally be done with it, but a part of her mourned for the study group that would inevitably be disbanded as they all went on to their separate classes. As she was leaving, Jeff fell into step next to her. They both looked straight ahead, neither one saying anything. Neither one really needing to say anything. And as Jeff held the exit door open for her, she stopped, stood on her tiptoes, and yanked his head down to hers as she planted a soft kiss on his lips (the fireworks were present for this one, by the way). When she pulled away, she saw the look of relief that crossed over his features before he finally opened his eyes and gave her a tender smile.

Annie liked maps, but sometimes it was wiser to just throw the map out of the window and simply enjoy the ride, wherever it may take you.


End file.
